New US Postal Service Ad Campaign: Email Sucks, So Mail Stuff Instead

from the from-luddites-r-us dept

It seems the US Postal Service (USPS) is starting to get pretty desperate. Losing a ton of money, it's apparently decided that the time is now to attack the competition. The competition, of course, is email. It's put out two TV commercials that focus on bashing email for not being either secure or reliable:

Of course, I'm pretty sure I've had a lot more physical mail "lost" by human carriers than emails just disappear. And you could easily argue that regular mail isn't particularly secure at times either. All in all, though, it seems like a bizarre commercial. Why even bother making silly assertions about email? Do they really think people are going to start saying... "gee, I can't trust this email stuff to communicate with my friends; now I'm going to start sending real letters through the USPS!"

Re:

I also don't have to waste time shredding emails with personal information on them before I throw them away or recycle them. There is no way that the overall physical mail process is more secure than electronic delivery or account login statements. All of my statements, which they showed in that ad, are only available through a login into the respective website.

Back in 1981...

the USPS had email, but couldn't even do that profitably. Or with anything resembling adeptness.

"The USPS would set up a network where a message would originate electronically. It would then be sent to one of a handful of participating postal offices that had terminals, where it would be printed out. The hard copy of the message would then be delivered to its destination - essentially in the same manner and with the same speed as first class mail."

So... like a telegraph, I suppose. Only at a loss of $5 per piece of 'electro-mail':

"A message was priced at 26¢ - and for each email message, the USPS was said to lose around $5."

Talking Points

In my town in the last few weeks there was a postal worker rally for the post office. I've noticed that there's a standard talking point about why the post office can't be cut: poor people in rural areas need to get their prescription drugs by mail, and if there was no Saturday delivery they would have to wait all the way until Monday to get them.

Unless, of course, they planned ahead and ordered them one day earlier.

When I pointed this out on the news site carrying the original article, a very well prepared troll accused me of trying to cut his great aunt who didn't like email off from the world.

So it looks like there's a whole campaign going on to keep a bureaucracy in power, complete with astroturf protest rallies and web presence.

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Fedex are retarded. Use Puro, cheaper and they don't leave your shipment outside your house unattended without ringing the bell ...

That being said. Yes let's all start using USPS again and wait 2-8 weeks for that damn letter. You know... old people always so that younger ones need to slow down. I guess only the USPS are paying attention.

expectation of privacy

From a legal perspective, snail mail does have a advantage when it comes to privacy. There's serious laws against opening mail not addressed to you and law enforcement can't expect to open people's mail without following proper procedure.
With this kind of advertisement, the feds are acknowledging that people are using email in the place of snail mail. I would think that equating the purpose of the two would also signify an acknowledgement that citizens expectations of privacy should be equivalent as well.

Re: expectation of privacy

To push that analogy a little further:
The Gov has physical control of all mail moving thru their USPS facilities--at any time for no expressed reason mail can be scanned, opened, disappeared, etc and this is normal because everybody expects some mail to just never arrive.

Perhaps if all email went thru their facilities their wouldn't be complaints...

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Are you joking? There is *no* security on emails. Absolutely none. Unless you're encrypting your own email before you send it, anyone on the path from one mail server to another can read your mail if they want to. Not to mention the email admins at your school or business who have access to all of your email. A letter in an USPS building or truck, or your postmaster-general-approved mailbox, is protected by federal law. It is much more secure.

Re: Why do we hold on to the past?

know what business you're in

E-mail is highly reliable. And the sad fact is that nobody cares about security. PGP (free and open-source) gives Fort Knox security and is quite easy to use, but just try persuading your correspondents to encrypt/decrypt e-mail with it. And don't get me started about the legality of cryptographic signatures.

The Post Office would have been smarter to play up a quality of paper mail which can't easily be surpassed by e-mail: charm. There is something about holding a letter in your hand, a piece of paper prepared by the hands of someone you know, with the handwriting you recognize, the tidiness or wildness, the post-scriptum crammed in at the bottom, the creases and finger-smudges, maybe the yellowing at the edges. I have a letter my grandfather wrote to my grandmother when he was stationed in London during WWII; he wrote it on the day they announced victory in Europe, and he describes the street scenes and celebrations in a youthful longhand, similar to but different from the inscriptions in some of his books from when he was an old man. In another month I'll write a letter to a couple of my little nieces inviting them (and their parents, natch) to a Christmas party. I'll use my favorite pen and let myself go a little with the capital letters, and maybe add a sketch or two. That's what paper is still best at.

Re: Re: Why do we hold on to the past?

Individuals versus companies

"gee, I can't trust this email stuff to communicate with my friends; now I'm going to start sending real letters through the USPS!"

I think you missed the point a bit. These ads aren't aimed at Joe Blow sending a love note to his girlfriend, or at a girl writing her Aunt in Nowhere, Nebraska. They're aimed at middle managers at firms, both big and small, who don't understand email and technology. They're designed to remind them that paper mail is traditional, and therefore better (yeah, right), while at the same time sowing some FUD about email. One person sending an email versus a paper letter to a friend or family member won't make or break the Post Office. One company switching all its billing to email instead of paper mail will make a measurable dent in their revenue, though.

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"anyone on the path from one mail server to another can read your mail if they want to."

You mean kind of like dozens of postal employees handle my mail and have the opportunity to open it? Or the way if my mailbox is full or the postal worker is confused, my mail will sometimes be left in front of my door where anyone steal it?

"Not to mention the email admins at your school or business who have access to all of your email."

Yeap. That's somewhat reminiscent of the way anyone at your company's mail-room could open your physical mail if you have it delivered there.

"A letter in an USPS building or truck, or your postmaster-general-approved mailbox, is protected by federal law."

That sort of reminds me of the way the 4th Amendment makes it illegal to read someone else's email.

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I order something from LA. It ships USPS. Not only does it take over a week to have a tracking update, but it takes roughly a month to get to me. Every single time. And we're not talking about a 5-10lbs package. No. An envelope. A plain little envelope. Takes exactly 32 days (excluding weekends and holidays) to come here.

Yeah, I wonder if it's not a postal guy walking from LA with my envelope. Would be faster...

Re: know what business you're in

My wife and I are long distance and we use the full range of communication services, video-chat, phone, social networks, email, IM and yes, snail-mail mostly for packages. We tried USPS, but gave up on them. They take too long, their insurance service is a scam and the service is poor to mediocre. If USPS wants to be used, they should try to provide a better service.

Typical USPS timeliness

But to give them full credit, I'll bet they are already starting to develop their anti-SMS campaign ads for rollout in 5-10 years. "Do you really trust your important messages to just go flying willy nilly through the air without even being in a sack???"

Re: e-mail sucks so mail stuff instead

Re: Individuals versus companies

They're aimed at middle managers at firms, both big and small, who don't understand email and technology.

"Print out my emails and read them back to me. I can't risk having my account compromised. Also, wear some gloves when you read those emails. And get me some sort of personal ventilation system. God knows where those 'electronic mails' have been."

Re: Did they mention viruses???

All those years ago

The USPS went wrong all those years ago when email started taking over as a main line communication. When e-mail servers started popping up all over the place, Juno, Hotmail, etc. Back then somebody should have had the smarts to get the USPS online and make it a e-mail system. That way it would have opened the door for familiarity with the USPS and kept them in the loop of mail delivery, both electronic and paper. I don't know how many times I've heard complaints about how email is undercutting the USPS, well stop bitching and do something about it.

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He was saying he doesn't have to rely on the security of the email box and transit, since all the vital information is only accessed through a secure website and not sent in an easily-intercepted email anyway.

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There is one benefit from ordering through the USPS. After reporting an SSD drive missing after 3 weeks and the USPS paying an insurance claim to the vendor because they couldn't find it anywhere, I received the SSD few days later.

Interestingly, USPS operates at a profit. So they aren't losing money on operations. Where they are going into the hole is due to a congressional mandate to pay 75 years worth of retirement in 5 years. Which is completely ridiculous. I'll get you links when I can get to something other than my phone.

Response to: illmunkeys on Oct 5th, 2011 @ 2:18pm

Response to: illmunkeys on Oct 5th, 2011 @ 2:18pm

To further clarify: the usps is one of the few govt entities that is self sufficient. Ie: they don't get tax dollars. It its evidence of govt working correctly. Which makes me crack up when people claim its failing. It does more business today, due to online shopping than ever before. The _only_ reason it is failing is because of the 2006 mandate. They are funding retirement for workers not even born yet. Any company would fail with this burden.

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Hypocracy

Did anyone else notice that at the end of those two ads to try and get people to stop using email and go with snail mail that you have to go online to their website to learn more about it? Kinda hypocritical if you ask me.

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I support paper mail.

I think paper has many more merits, I actually just spent all day in circles between 2 servers, 3 different levels of spam filters and a customer trying to send some important documents to me. And the irony is as mad as i get at the USPS for misplacing something, it has happened twice in my life. E-mail does this to me monthly. Also for security, so what if you have to shred your paper, or even burn it. At least it is one copy and straight forward. The post office does not open, scan and save a copy. My mail servers, isp, senders mail server all save e-mails, Google scans it for information and in the end, you still have to shred your HDD to really get the data off of it.